Online Assessment Resources for the Classroom! TCEA17

I was honored to be selected to present this Breakout Session during Monday's TCEA Google Academy.  It was great having a large collection of people and ideas in the room! The presentation, embedded below, covered a few Google-connectable resources online (GoFormative.com, Nearpod.com and Quizziz.com) , some of the often-missed features of Google Forms and a few Google Add-ons for Forms and Sheets.

These slides will give you an idea as to what we covered, but if you want to know more, drop a comment below or find me on Twitter or G+!

Making Music Out Of Learning?

It's fitting that I learned this during TCEA2017, since we are in the Live Music Capital of the Universe and all. All it takes at a large gathering like this is a part of a conversation to drop new ideas into my head. Today, it is Soundtrap.com.

I'm digg'n Soundtrap for more reasons that it is a very easy to use and free music loop creator. It is available for use on Chromebooks, iOS and Android and I guess any browser. There are paid extensions for more loops and media, but a student can create a pretty nice jam with the included loops and microphone-recorded media for FREE.

But that is only part of why I like it.  I can also invite others to create a song with me using their Google ID for login. I can send an invitation to a friend who can then simultaneously access the song, text or video chat in a window with other collaborators, and edit the shared song.

Introducing my first SoundTrap Jam! TCEA17 Music

Students can very quickly create short backing tracks for their Bookshare or slide shows, practice Digital Citizenship by using non-copywritten media and maybe provide background audio for a class video.

How would you use this in a classroom?

Create 3D/VR Worlds For Free?

Thanking my friend Dennis Grice for sharing this one out.  There is a new site called Cospaces.io that provides a creative environment for building 3D worlds that can be explored in virtual reality (VR) or from laptop. The learning curve is small and the payoff can be big.

The first question a teacher needs to be asking these days is, "What are the terms of service / Privacy?" The company owning Cospaces has communicated that they want this product to be student friendly and they are changing privacy language to allow for under 13yr students.

The website is young, but the developers are reaching out to teachers to ask what can be added or provided that makes this tool work for the classroom.  There have been questions about including Google+ logins and classroom support. Their support has been impressive so far.

It is a free tool right now and they are considering some subscription options.  I'm not sure how much will stay free with time.  So get on it now while it is free!!

So, what is it?? Students (with email accounts) can go onto the website and start creating a project. Using objects from their impressive graphic collection, you can build a 3d scene by placing objects anywhere on or above the environment's surface. Objects can be moved, rotated, elevated, colorized and more. You can create vertical or horizontal text surfaces to provide context to the scene you are building. (There does not seem to be any font styling options yet.)  The 'search internet for images' feature hasn't worked for me, but I could easily drag and drop an image file from my computer into the import window.

When you starting reading this post, you started hearing my beautiful daughter saying her ABC's. (And no, you can't stop her without hitting your mute button.  But why would you? :) Your project allows you to import an audio file, mine was a .wav file, and it plays when viewing the world in your browser.  When experiencing this in VR, the audio did not play.   I'm looking forward to being able to trigger audio within the world, perhaps play a file when I get close to certain objects.

My teacher brain loves that I did all of the above for free. I loves even more that the project that was created was shared via URL or embedded (like in this blog below). Unlike Minecraft, teachers don't pay to install software and run a special server just to create a world that mom and dad can't see easily at home.  Cospaces projects can be experienced on any laptop using just the shared URL.

The laptop browser creates the world.  Using your iOS or Android device, you can experience the world in VR.  Open the project with your Google Goggles and step into your creation. Without the goggles, you can finger-push your way through the world or move the phone around to see around you.


I am already a fan of Cospaces.io and look forward to how they will continue to develope it and how students will use it in our classrooms!

Discovery Education: Sharing Media Between Teachers and Students

Discovery Education has thousands of media and interactive resources available to all AISD teachers and students.  All teachers and students already have accounts created for them which connect students to teachers automatically.  Teachers can assign videos, interactive labs, or any other media to students individually or to the entire class at the same time. And students can even create digital presentation posters (called Board Builders) and easily share them with their teachers.

First, let's look at how to share between teachers and students and then look how to make this work more easily for teachers.

Students Share With Teachers
When students login to Discovery Education, they can share videos and their Board Builder products with teachers. When sharing, students can click the teacher menu to show a list of their teachers.

Teachers Share With Students

Teachers can use the assign feature to share with individual students and entire class groups. First, click on the triangle at the top right of your media and use the Assign option. 

In the Assign window, click the Assign to Classroom menu to select a specific class that you teach. Your classes should automatically show up.  Select it and click the Assign button at the bottom.  The assigned media will show up on the students' Assignment tab when they go to the Discovery Education website.

Change The Name Of Your Classes
In the previous picture, you see how all of this teacher's classes share the same name. This is not helpful, but you can change these names.  First, go to your My DE page in Discovery Education. Click the Classroom Manager tab and select My Classes.

Click My Classes to show the list of classes assigned to you. You can click the + next to the class to show the students assigned to that class. 

Once you know which period each class is, you can click the Edit option to rename the class in Discovery Education.

Rename your class and click save. 

One last tip for sharing.  For teachers who use Google Classroom, you can click the Share button to locate the Google Classroom icon. Using that icon, you can assign content directly to your Classroom announcements and assignments from the Discovery Education website.

Discovery Education has videos, audio files, digital texts, audio books, images, lesson resources and so much more.  Go to DE today and find lots of How To documents and videos under the Professional Learning tab.  

For more information or on-campus support, contact your AISD Technology Design Coach! 

Shorten URLs For Students and Printed Newsletters

Sharing a very long website address is easy when you are using some type of digital tool like a website, email or QR code.  But this is significantly more difficult if you are sharing that URL on a printed poster, newsletter or telling someone face to face.  The answer: URL Shortening Tools!

Below are three of the many shortening tools that are out there. These have a proven history and have different strengths. These can be life-changers, so find one that works for you specific needs.

Goo.gl 

First login to your AISD Cloud (or Gmail) account so that the short URLs that you create will be linked to your Google ID account and leave you with a library of shortened URLs. 

Pros: Goo.gl keeps a list of all shortened URLs; the Details link for each URL also provides a QR code and usage statistics. Has a Chrome extension that makes creation even easier.
Cons: You cannot choose the alias; the aliases are case-sensitive and can sometimes be confusing.
Video Tutorial: How To Use Goo.gl

Bit.ly

My own go-to choice. No login is required to create a short URL at http://bit.ly . Paste your long URL in the top box and you are automatically given a short URL.
Pros: Create a free login to keep track of created URLs; you can create custom aliases using the ‘customize’ option; aliases are not case-sensitive. Has a Chrome extension that makes creation even easier.
Cons: You cannot dynamically change the original URL without buying a Pro account.

TinyURL.com

A long-time favorite, it remains a very fast URL creator. Frequently rated as one of the fastest URL Shortening tools, http://tinyurl.com has no account creation. You just paste your long URL into the box and click “Make Tinyurl”. Add an alias before you make the URL to customize your short URL.
Pros: Tinyurl.com lets you create a custom alias (tinyurl.com/alias).
Cons: Tinyurl does not keep track of your previously-created URLs.

Mash Google Sheet Data and Google Maps!

Trevor Beck published a great video that shows how students can use a Google Sheet of data and import it into Google Maps to make an interactive map.  The video is pretty easy to understand and follow!

How can teachers use this?

• In a world history class, combine economic data with geographic tags on the map for easier comparison between locations.
• Use the Layers to provide hideable data. Have one layer for German troop movement and another for Allied troop movement.  Spreadsheet data could provide dates of military action and casualty statistics. 
• Historical data regarding climate change could be collected in a spreadsheet which could be imported into the map. Layers could provide points for specific decades.
• Record biographical information for people important in Texas history.  Import the data into a Google map that shows where these people lived in Texas.
• Similar to Google LitTrips, connect fictional events in a historical fiction story to their real geographic locations.  Edit the tags to include student-made art that illustrates the events.

What are some other ways that you could combine spreadsheets and Google Maps in your classroom? Please share in the comments below!

Empowering Students Is Opening Doors

I was welcomed into a few classrooms this morning at Baldwin Elementary and saw some great learning at the hands of students.

Campus Innovation Coach Raven Reaves was in a health lesson with her students. She had one student teach me about what they were doing. Ms Reaves uses Google Classroom to provide instructions, online resources as well as a PDF file that contained some comprehension questions. My new student-teacher friend showed me (as if it was no big deal) how the students open up the pdf from the Classroom assignment, open it with DocHub in the Cloud, and edit the PDF with their answers. Students either attach the link to the completed pdf work or download it to their Google Drive and attach that to their assignment.  A couple of these 4th grade students confirmed that it was so easy, even an adult could do it.

Sarah Stanfield, a Technology Cohort1 teacher, invited me into her class the first day she was using Google Classroom with her 3rd-grade students. Trying new technology with our younger students can have the ability to raise stress levels for any teacher, but Ms Stanfield's students took to Classroom with little hesitation. They got into her first assignment and was quickly typing their final copy of an essay they had been working on.  Quick finishers were editing independently and some even were adding photos to their final version before the end of class, without any direction.

On the way out, I was able to listen to some of the 5th grade programmers who were working on making their Dot and Dash robots perform certain tasks. Student teams have a series of tasks to accomplish through programming actions on the bots. The students work throughout the week and will eventually be submitting their work to a national contest in November. William Crowley's math class provides connections between classroom math, algorithmic thinking and collaborative problem-solving for these engaged 5th grade solution designers.

It is awesome watching these teachers use the technology, but it's more awesome seeing that the technology wasn't the lesson.  Students in these classes were creating personal narratives, learning about health issues, practicing collaborative working skills, using sequential algorithmic thinking and much more.  They were engaged by the tech, but it was just the open door that led to deeper concepts or more engaging curriculum activities.  

Loved my time with these students and love knowing that there are many other things happening in other rooms here at Baldwin!